


the concentration of salt in sea ice

by snagov



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Emotional Porn, Established Relationship, Fantasizing, Light Dom/sub, Love, M/M, Possessive Sex, Roleplay, Smut, Tenderness, how many lashes for skylarking in the bedroom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:41:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24921709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: Not everything is so easily left behind on the ice.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 35
Kudos: 121





	the concentration of salt in sea ice

_The watchmen found me_  
_as they went about in the city._  
_“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”_  
_Scarcely had I passed them_  
_when I found him whom my soul loves._  
_I held him, and would not let him go_  
\- Song of Solomon 3

* * *

_Summer 1852_

Tell me again about ghost stories.

We've talked about this. The only difference between a love story and a ghost story is whether or not you come out of it alone. The clock counts out the long minutes like a beating heart. James stands near the wood-paneled wall, his spine straight and his hands held firmly at his sides. It is the twitching of his fingers, the flexing and balling of his fists, that give him away. Standing silently, he tries to still his mind. The thoughts have always come, rising up like the dead, trying to ration the rest of his life. After he closes his eyes for the last time, what will be left? How long will the ships last, the tins of canned food? How long will his name be remembered?

Out the window, the dark blue of the sky bears down, not answering a thing. It is the bright blue hour of the evening that the artists love best. Astronomical dusk. Sailors know it as the last measure of light of the day, before the dark makes it impossible to tell wind from water.

"Are you not needed on _Erebus_ , James?" Francis asks, pen scratching in his ledger. "Or are you simply haunting my cabin for the sheer pleasure of it?" His voice is low and strange. There is an unasked question tucked into the blank spaces between words. Needs are a long list aboard the two ships. A need for freedom, for shattered ice and open water. For fresh meat and fruit, for a cup of good tea, for warmth. For touch and taste, the flavor of someone else's skin. Salt, please. We cannot live without salt.

James swallows. "I only wondered if you had any need of me here before I go," he says, looking up and catching blue eyes already pinned to him. "Any need at all… sir." 

An answer given. Francis raises a brow and pushes his chair back from the desk, looking over James with an appraising glance.

"I find that I do."

"How may I, sir?" James says because _I need you_ is as thick as molasses and sticks to his tongue. 

"On your knees."

James' cheeks are red and the floor is hard on his knees.

He knows why he comes here like this, his cock hard and thick, stuffed down a trouser leg. James comes because he has an ache in him, a strange fire. He comes because he lies in his bunk unable to think of anything else but strong hands and a clever mouth, being taken apart from the inside out. He comes here, wet and stretched, knocking on _Terror’_ s Great Cabin door, hoping Francis might bite. He'll be used. Yes, just as he needs. Just as he likes. The shame of it licking up the back of his neck, down his shivering spine. James is called to it, to go and be stuffed silent, to bend forward and backward, silent and aching, filled to the brim. A warm body, wet and open, there to be fucked. 

“Take me out," Francis commands, his voice rough.

(James can hear the rough drunkenness in his brogue, though there is no whiskey on his breath. The flush on Francis' face is all of James' own making, nothing from a bottle. Look again, read between the lines. See a man bent on the thick pile of a bedroom rug, dark hair falling around his face. Over his bent neck, stretched out like Isaac on Moriah, waiting for the blow. See how Francis watches him not from a chair at a desk, but seated upon the edge of an unmade bed. 

_"Would you indulge me in a little play-acting?"_ James had asked one night, growing hot with the memory of fantasies buried below his skin and the ice.

 _"Have I ever refused you?"_ Francis had answered.) 

He shifts on his knees and breathes in heavily. James’ face burns as he works his long fingers over the laces and draws out Francis’ cock. Thick and steady in his hand. A hot, living thing. He pauses, glancing upward, his own dick twitching in his trousers. 

“Go to it then,” Francis says, low and dark. The first time James had sucked a cock into his mouth, he had been surprised by the feel. The taste of it, as if skin should taste of anything other than skin. There’s no surprise now, curling his tongue along the topography of the ridges and curves, feeling the rush of blood through Francis’ body. 

Francis hisses, settling a hand into James' hair, gripping it softly. James likes when he pulls and the pain sparkles along his hairline, he likes when the cock is his mouth is nearly too much, nearly held there too long. He swallows as much as he can, his sharp nose brushing the soft curve of Francis' stomach. He likes it even when Francis comes, tasting like ash and bitter charcoal, spilling sour and salty down his gullet. 

But Francis pulls him off this time instead. His cock drops, shining with spit against his own thigh. James breathes harshly and the ache in his empty mouth is not unlike the one between his legs. _Fill me,_ he thinks, begging for ballast.

"Stand," Francis says. So James does. When Francis' hand cups him in his trousers, thick and hard and desperate, James moans. _God, I love how you touch me._ To be reached for as if owned, a prized possession. Wanted. Good enough. "You like this," Francis murmurs, half in wonder. James moans as he feels Francis' other hand reach under his jacket and trail his fingertips down James' spine. "You like coming here already wet and open, ready for me. Just on the off chance that I might have need of you."

" _Christ,_ yes." _Use me,_ he thinks. _Wreck me, please._

"Who else do you allow to make a habit of you?" Francis asks, his voice low and dangerous. "If I leave you empty and unfulfilled, whose bed do you go to? Le Vesconte?"

James shakes his head. Wool and winter fill his nostrils. (Wool, yes, but winter doesn't haunt him today. It is midsummer, see the sash of the open window, the color of late evening turning the sky dark blue. Twilight paints the grassy acres of this quiet house. Cicadas sing and pale breezes brush the leaves of the hawthorns and ash trees. Look out there, the only burning things are fireflies. They speak of _Terror_ but nothing rocks beneath them but the bed. The walls that cup them are not English oak but plaster and brick. If James were to get up now and walk outside, he would find only their own garden.) 

"Would you do this for any First, I wonder? Is that how it would be, James?"

"God, no. Just you."

"Good," Francis says, pushing a finger into him. James feels hot, his cock heavy and pulsing between his thighs, speared on Francis' hand. "I'm going to fuck you now." 

" _Please."_

"Should I bring you to my berth? My bunk? Or just have you here, right across my desk?" Francis kisses along James' throat, dipping into the hollows beneath his clavicles while pushing James further onto the bed. He imagines the feel of _Terror's_ oak desk beneath him, the way the sharp corners might cut into his thighs while Francis put his weight into it. His hair splays out across a white pillow and he imagines this is not linen but a white map beneath them, marked up with possibilities and dead ends. 

"Wherever you'll have me," James gasps. Francis finds a nipple and pulls it with his mouth. " _Anywhere_ you'll have me."

"I should keep you here. Tie you up at my desk, put a collar around that pretty throat." Francis runs a hand along James' neck, briefly wrapping his fingers around the larynx before releasing. "Make use of you whenever I want." 

The heat does nothing but build. He's scorching. In the dead of winter, he finds within him an impossible summer. 

"I’ve half a mind to sit you on my lap and invite everyone to watch you squirm on my hand, let them see just how damned beautiful you are.” 

"Francis, please," James begs. 

"Not yet. I will have you when I'm good and ready." Francis works further open; James could come on that hand if he tried. "Look at you," Francis murmurs. "You lovely thing. I should keep you on display, look at you whenever I like." With his free hand, he grips James' chin and turns it to the mirror above the washstand. "Anyone who had business with me, _anyone_ who came into the Great Cabin at all, would see you. And could not touch you. The prettiest damn picture, they might look but _cannot_ touch."

James moans again, the heat flickering about his crown and a flush spreading wildly across his chest. His head bows back as Francis pulls gently at his hair, exposing his neck. He feels that soft mouth descend on his skin, sucking a bruise into the muscle of neck and shoulder. 

"Shared all my damn life," Francis murmurs to his skin. "Rooms, clothes, meals. I will not be sharing you." He holds James tightly, like a man accustomed to seeing things slip through his fingers. 

"I'm yours. I am, I _am._ I swear to it."

"Fuck." Francis tightens his jaw and closes his eyes before leaning back in with hot breath at James' ear. “And if I left you empty that night, wet and unused, would you go back to your cabin and lock the door, wrap your hand around that lovely cock of yours and frig yourself till you came all over your own sheets?”

 _I did, you have._ “Yes, god, yes.”

“Did you want me, James?” Francis’ eyes are bright and gleaming, his words sharpened with a need to hear the answer again. (James has told him hundreds of times. In beds and on tables, straddling his lap on sofas, whispering it into the curl of his ear.) 

“Like nothing else. From the - “ He stutters on a knuckle, another finger, being fucked open by deft hands. A sailor might tie a beautiful knot, their hands are more than capable of pulling one undone. “From the start.”

(Patroclus had loved Achilles from the start. If he had been asked about his legacy, he would have said loving Achilles was the best thing he had ever done.) 

"You're a sight for sore eyes, James. Look here, look at you," Francis murmurs, pressing his free hand to James' neck and bending him down to see where his body is breached. Thick, greased fingers fucking into him slowly, one by one by one. He flushes, knowing he will see these hands again later, washed and dried, tying a knot or holding a telescope. He will see them on _Terror_ 's ten-spoke wheel, though there is nowhere to sail to on the ice. 

"So look at me," James hisses. "If you like what you see." Even he can hear the needy edge to his own voice, the ache for reassurance. He knows a mirror well-enough to know he is on the shadowed side of beauty. His skin is only more lined and never less. His hair, still long and dark, is thinner than it once was and grey stipples his beard. Yet, when Francis looks at him, touches him, James has never felt more beautiful.

"Oh, I do." Francis plants both hands on either side of his chest, the fat dark head of his cock pushing against James, sliding across slippery skin. He shivers at the thought of it.

“Let me in,” Francis whispers, his breath hot against James’ ear. “Let me in, love. There's a lad." 

James bites his lip, swallowing the sounds of pleasure that might roll off his tongue. His eyes roll back and close, his hands gripping tightly at Francis' broad, capable shoulders as he feels Francis push within him, filling the empty spaces of his body. Bliss and incandescence all in one. 

"Bloody hell," he mutters, burying his face in Francis' steady chest, hearing the constant thump of his heart. The sturdy isochronal march of it, this rhythm he lives his life to. Love in another language, a common language without words. He knows how Francis touches something he loves, he has seen how Francis runs his hands over _Terror_ 's railings, her walls, her wheel. Under Francis' hands, he is touched just the same. 

When Francis reaches between them and finally takes James' cock in hand, it's both a relief and a torture.  
  
" _Look_ at you," Francis says. James looks up into his eyes to find them blazing and hot, his own need reflected right back at him. "Driving me to utter distraction, you beautiful thing - " 

"Keep me, Francis. Make me yours, don't let me go," he pants. "Don't you dare." _Don't you dare leave me here alone._ Francis' hands tighten on him and James inhales, held fast and safe. Francis, who drops nothing. Francis, who breaks nothing. Francis, the shepherd of his lost flock. James is safe here. Once, long ago, soldiers had been paid in salt; here he is, sealing his mouth to Francis' skin and making a feast of it.

" _Never._ Never would let you go. Never let you out of my _goddamn sight,_ no one would touch you. No one would think to paw at you. They wouldn't dare, not if you're _mine._ " His hips are faster and breathing rapid. Somewhere the thread of the fantasy has been lost, frayed out with other meanings. They had started on a ship, imagining _Terror_ 's Great Cabin, but James can feel the burning sun of the shale in Francis' words. When Francis kisses him, wraps his hands around James' wrists and noses at the pulse in his throat, James knows he's seeing only broken limestone and canvas tents, sniffing for blood and checking the same old wounds. (The scars are long-closed and silver now. No longer pink and new. Still, Francis checks.) 

“Don’t _stop._ ”

Francis wraps his hand tighter, moving in just the way James loves best. He keens, eyes drifting half-shut, unable to do anything but be fucked by hand and cock, spitted on one and wrapped in the other. The pressure builds and he doesn’t even have a hand on himself, there’s no brake, no way to stop it. Francis breathes heavily and his eyes are bright and hot, milking the come out of him. 

Somewhere with Francis wrapped around him and buried in his living body. somewhere with Francis’ hot breath against skin, his jaw scrubbed raw by a sandpaper kiss, somewhere where Francis strips him bare, exposed and seen, and calls him beautiful anyway. Somewhere between I’ll keep you and I’ll never let you go, James cries out into the white world and comes. 

" _Oh,_ Christ alive," he pants into Francis' shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck. Francis' breath comes quick and short too, he drops his sweaty forehead against James'. 

"Was that well enough?" Francis sounds uncertain. His pale brow is furrowed in self-conscious hesitation, his hair damp and wild. James reaches up to smooth it down, watching how Francis' eyes close at his touch.

"Magnificent," he breathes. "God, Francis, - " He shifts, bearing down on Francis' burning hot cock, buried deep in his body. Francis hisses. "Keep going." 

Francis' hands curl around James' sides again, pushing harder and faster. He doesn't speak again, just quiet and eyes half-closed, biting his own lip, looking down at James below him. Hungry pale eyes and a half-devastated touch. James, it's your turn to tell a story. He pulls Francis in for a kiss, then shifts to press his face into Francis' ear and whisper. He knows just the tale to tell, true and plucked from his breast. "I wanted you to keep me. All yours, just only yours. I still want you to. Only you, Francis. You must know that. You _must._ I wanted you from the start. Your hands, your gorgeous hands. Your mouth. God, I wanted you to look at me. Of everyone there, of everyone still, I would come to you over and over and over again. Out of a thousand faces, my dearest Francis, you must know it would _always_ be you."

Francis chokes and James wonders if it had been half a sob. The fingers on his hips twitch wildly, the pace almost brutal if not for the careful way Francis holds him, the well-traveled map. Francis' hands are hungry and rove across his chest, his ribs and solar plexus too. How would they have touched before? Would Francis have gripped him tighter, dug his fingers like tines into the meat of him? Would Francis have liked bruising him? Marking him? Even two years after their return to England, the scurvy well-driven from his healed body, Francis is still careful with his touch. He does not pull at the scars, as if afraid they might break. He does not suck a bruise into his collar bone, as if it might bleed out later. 

They have all returned with scars from the ice, some more visible than others. 

"James, I - " Francis shudders, his hips driving wildly."I'll make a - sodding _mess_ of you."

James wraps his legs around Francis', driving him further within the comfort of his own body. " _Fuck_ me, Francis. Don't leave me empty." 

"Christ, your damn _mouth_ \- " 

James knows how to push Francis over the edge. He dips his fingers into the come glistening on his own belly and puts them to Francis' lips, pushing inside. Francis swallows and chokes on a moan. James kisses him, sharing the meal. With his tongue against Francis' and Francis buried safely inside his body, Francis knocks against his spine and comes, crying out into the dark bedroom. 

Francis collapses on him, his chest heaving and damp. He kisses James upon his mouth, his jaw, his cheeks, his ears, his neck, his shoulders. 

"Shhh," James murmurs, his arm around Francis, a thumb rubbing gentle circles into the short hairs of the nape of his neck. "It's alright. I'm here."

All love stories are ghost stories, so all lovers are a little bit haunted. We wonder about the ghost at the door, the image of the lover destroyed. While we have it, the exact shape of love is unknown. When love leaves, we know the abscesses and caves left behind, the empty places where our lovers once lived within us. We beg them to not leave us but nothing ever sticks. Sooner or later, one of us must go first, either by taking off a wedding ring or by drifting away on the ice. Love is the ballast we store within each other, steadying ourselves for the long walk home. When it is gone, we know the shape of it. We know how much we need, what we are asking for. It is why we are terrified to ask for love, knowing how wide the spaces are. How could filling ourselves up not be too much?

"I could have - god, if I hadn't been a fool, James - " 

"I'm no innocent in this, I was just as much at fault," James says. He imagines how it could have gone, slipping into each other's bunks as the expedition had set out. He can picture Francis clearly, where he stumbles is himself. He tries to imagine that perfectly-coiffed version of himself, all polished edges and embroidered tales, held in Francis' arms and recoils at the idea. _I didn't deserve you then. Perhaps still don't, even now. But that creature who sought the worst in you, I would not share you with him._ “Still, I would not change it, Francis.”

Francis huffs a dry laugh. 

“Would you love me half so well then?" James asks, turning to look squarely at him. "We are not who we were.” _You kept me. You kept me safe. All of us._ He remembers that night on the walk, how he had pulled back his cap and Welsh wig, baring his hairline to his captain. _"Francis,"_ he had said. _"It will only get worse. You and I, well, we both know this. Here, there is no hope for me here. There may come a time when I will ask you to have pity on me. Goodsir has medicines that can end suffering, and I will be suffering. You must promise me this kindness. Please."_

Francis had taken a long time to look up. And a long time to nod in silent acquiescence. Yet, he had shouldered that too. 

“Perhaps." Their hands intertwine together. He doesn't know what shape they make in the bed, the two of them curled like this. He imagines that if he had a bird's eye view, like God peering down, they might look like quotation marks. Parentheses. A matched set, each keeping the other. "I should have been better to you. Better to all of you." 

"Now, none of that melancholy. Not tonight, I won't have it." He leans forward, raising a dark brow and places a kiss on Francis' chest. Then shoulders, neck, chin, and mouth. "I have a beautiful man in my bed and I intend to enjoy it." 

"You'll need your blasted eyes checked," Francis mutters, but there's a smile in it. "And this is _my_ bed too."

"I know beauty when I see it." James kisses him again and Francis flushes a bright red across his cheeks and nose. His zygomatic arch looking for all the world like a sunset. "Plus, you look _quite_ well when you're all poked up."

"Tis a shame I cannot assign you duty for mischief. Skylarking in my own damn bed."   
  
James laughs, admiring how the moonlight pools in the dimples and divots of Francis' rough skin, how his pale eyes crinkle as he looks back. Francis touches James' throat with a careful hand, thumb brushing over the Adam's apple and gentling into the deep divot below. Neither move to speak. It is a fine line between a ghost story and a love story, one must always be the skeleton you build the other upon. There is no shale in this room, there is no saltwater below them. Just a house in the country with a fishing pond and fresh milk. Tomorrow, there will be fresh scones and strawberry jam, clotted cream and strong tea. Francis will huff at a newspaper and James will raise his brow in humor, looking over a china teacup. Francis might wear the green waistcoat and James might favor a fine yellow. (They, neither of them, will wear blue.) 

Watch how Francis moves, how careful shepherd's hands shift James to pull him closer. How he presses his mouth to the curve of James' throat, leaving a kiss for the ghost still within.

**Author's Note:**

> the line about finding an impossible summer within the dead of winter isn’t mine but is a bastardized version of camus’ “in the midst of winter, i found there was within me an invincible summer.”


End file.
